Xeno Queer

zenolalia @ 2023-11-09T13:25:00

2023-11-09T18:54:22Z

A while back I went and re read an ancient diary entry of mine. One of the oldest surviving ones I have. I keep thinking about it.

I hate that nothing has changed since then.

It was about Israel. Of course it was. They dominate my life at a crossroads so vanishingly few people can understand. Vanished by them. Vanished by the US through them.

( Read more... )

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Food Wars

2023-09-17T17:48:59Z

Ohohoho it's fun ti have to think of silly titles for posts sometimes. I'm glad tumblr doesn't require titles, but I do enjoy them.

Anyway, I'm crossposting this one. I think it's worth storing, and maybe that this platform will be more conducive to the type of conversation I'd like to have with this regards.

So.

Tumblr OP, with Mino's tags here.

US Americans are, by and large, disconnected from food production in a way that I honestly was not equipped to understand based on where I grew up. Due to a combination of location and poverty, my family and community during childhood were heavily built around hunting for meat, farming for vegetables, and managing food waste through small animals (chickens, dogs, maybe a pig if you're rich/clever/weird enough to pen it, etc).

I didn't realize until the pandemic when "backyard chickens" became a "trend" just how separate my experience was from the norm.

I always perceived grocery stores as something for.... well. People with money to travel to them, growing up. We bought food there monthly in the winter, and saved our money on vegetable farming and hunting in the summer to afford it.

And I think what I've just described sounds like an unfathomable, impossible dreamscape from one of my solarpunk fantasies or whatever.

Or else sounds like a hellish monstrosity, if you're more familiar with rural poverty and food deserts.

But like... it's neither of those really. It's just... a food system that isn't as tied to the industrial complex as most in the US.

And that modest disconnect still sounds like a made up imagination world to most people in this country. That's how bad the disconnect between food, ALL food, and the average US American is.

And that's without even touching on the way foods native to various parts of the US are considered broadly inferior/filthy compared to colonial imports, including and especially with regards to meats.

===End of tumblr post===

I'm still just thinking about this subject a lot. I've talked before, especially on this blog, about food based racism I experienced growing up. But as I entered adulthood and left rural living behind, I experienced a peculiar sort of food classism (?) instead. The idea that I know how to manage a small scale farmstead because... because why would't I? Who DOESN'T???

It's still strange to me.

But then, I still have to remind myself that just because I have paranoid delusions about mass persecution that are exacerbated by real world politics, and thus literally spend a lot of time preparing for the apocalypse, I am not a "prepper"either.

After all, my preparations include making sure I'm up to date on current food processing safety standards, that I have adequate sewing supplies, that I know how to treat common poultry injuries and infections, that stuff.

you know.

actually useful skills.

Anyway, the disconnect is real and it confuses me to no ends.

Do you know most Americans not only have never killed a fish or game animal, but haven't even seen one be killed? That's so weird to me. How do you live like that??

Anyway, IDK, what are your thoughts??

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Crosspost

2023-07-12T19:57:29Z

Crossposted from tumblr here.

This is such a blatant, malicious warping of the actual events.
First of all, tags used to be easier to avoid. In the old days, circa 2012, only the first 5 tags on a post were indexed to the tag feed. So, it was common practice to, for example, use the tags “NSFW, Not safe for work, adults only, porn, pornography” to eat up the first 5 tags on explicit works, then tag the ships, content, etc to organize your blog safe in the knowledge that you would only be posting porn to the porn tags.
Then the "new tag search” (my term, not theirs) was introduced. This was around 2014? 2013? It was before acecourse really took off, because it helped fuel a lot of acecourse’s more heinous behaviours.

See, tumblr has always been a majority adult, majority NSFW website. This is reflected in the app stores’ age ratings being 17+. Which, you’ll notice is distinct from the 18+ that denotes “adult only” in the US. This is because anyone over 13 has always been able to register on tumblr. This was and is common practice on much of the internet today, eg facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. It’s broadly accepted that children may be guests in these places, in the same way they may be guests at a sports bar on quiz night. So long as no one gives the children alcohol, the adults are welcome to drink.

( Read more... )

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Sarah Z Again

2021-08-17T22:07:29Z

I was screenshot and inserted into her latest video, the one where she makes fun of a cult with a death toll because she thinks they use childish language.

I'm so tired.

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Matriculation

2021-08-13T03:11:25Z

Or, "everyone kept being like, oh yeah the Matrix is influenced by ~anime,~ but none of you fuckers ever said it was MAGICAL GIRL anime and I have missed out on 20 years of this."

This, like the homofascism post, is probably going to evolve over the next few days as it goes from spitball notes to something coherent.

( Read more... )*I'm pretty sure that was just one 5 hour long movie with an intermission.

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So, about those Matrix movies

2021-08-12T03:06:21Z

Why the fuck did none of you ever tell me how the "anime" that the Matrix movies are based on were fucking magical girl anime?

You fuckers know I love me some magical girl shit, right? If you did know that, then you were derelict in your duties for not recommending these movies.

Also did they lift the sex scene from Utena? That's like. There's a lot to unpack there.

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Queer Autophagia

2021-08-09T16:21:28Z

Or, self destruction being presented as beneficial by the very actors who most want us all dead.

An essay on homofascism, homonationalism, and (unfortunately) mediocre tiktok videos.

( Read more... )

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Shameless Cashgrab (Complimentary): A Space Jam Legacy Liveblog

2021-07-18T04:53:48Z

This post has been heavily editted for cross platform posting. The original draft is located at the end but the primary difference is that I was having a psychological meltdown at the time of notation.

---

Please join me on this liveblog/review/commentary track for the recently released Space Jam Legacy, a blatant attempt to suction money out of the pockets of the exhausted and broken masses instead of actually doing anything useful with these properties, or better yet, releasing them into the public domain for the rest of us to enjoy why you use your big budgets and extreme technical skills to create new things, boundary pushing things.

Except for the part where actually the movie is a love song to the days of being 6 years old and hype as FUCK to watch a GODDAMN CARTOON.

( Anyroad ) End of final draft. Original draft begins below.
===
( Read more... )

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zenolalia @ 2021-03-17T23:10:00

2021-03-18T03:11:18Z

I've done a lot of drugs and actual fucking celebrities in real life have decided to call me a hysterical little freak and sic their fans after me so I'm having a GREAT AND VERY NORMAL DAY hope these insane babbling drug fuelled panic posts find you all well

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What is the opposite of shitpost

2021-03-18T03:10:24Z

It's like srspost or whatever but like

Is it piss post, or is it food post?

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Shitpost

2021-03-18T03:09:32Z

Me: Can you imagine if I logged back on to DW for the first time in a year and just made a weird post about how my trackball is still really good actually, even though I've dropped it off like a dozen high things and this disappeared for another year

Also me: God lmao that would be so bad, definitely don't do that

Me: ....unless?

Also me: Unless..?

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zenolalia @ 2020-06-08T01:03:00

2020-06-08T05:12:51Z

So, my elecom thumb trackball has given up the ghost. The switch under the left click is becoming less and less responsive.

As trackballs fall further and further out of favour with the general public and become increasingly niche hardware, the cost of replacement goes up, and the quality of contruction goes down. I'm pretty tired of having to replace mine every year or so. But I can't use a mouse: it irritates my shoulder to the point of paralysis.

As such, I decided to get a Ploopy. It's a very silly name, but for an excellent product. Some dude who really loves trackballs just straight up made it. The whole thing is opensource: if you have access to a 3D printer, a bit of pi-style circuit board, some screws, 3 ball bearings, and a USB cable you can make one entirely using the software provided on github.

I thought about going around it the long way, but our libraries are still only on reduced hours so 3D printing isn't really feasible right now. The dude sells assemble-yourself kits, which I also considered, but TBH I hate soldering and if I'm already paying for the hardware, I'd rather just pay someone else to solder it too.

So I ordered a fully assembled one, and now it's here, and I'm at a loss.

You'd think, having exclusively used trackballs for like a decade, this would be fine. But it's just like... woo, it is a Lot.

On one hand, the construction is amazing. I could kill a man with this trackball and it wouldn't even notice. The movement of the ball is so smooth and swift, it just goes and goes and goes. The ball bearings make a soft, pleasant sussurus similar to a high end fidget spinner, which is extremely satisfying.

On the other hand, every one of the shitty plasticky lightweight trackballs I've paid far too much for in the last decade has been thumb driven.

You move the ball (and thus the cursor) with your thumb, and you click the buttons or scroll the wheel with your fingers.

The Ploopy is finger driven. You use your index (and/or middle finger) to roll the ball, and your thumb to click the buttons. This lets you maintain a healthier wrist posture, in theory offers more precise movement of the ball, faster response time on clicking, etc.

I'm having war flashbacks to the time I tried learning Colemak typing, which was a similar feeling. Like, sure, I could gain a lot of benefits such as faster, more accurate typing and healthier hand placement/movement, but the unlearning of QWERTY makes me hurty.

Finger driven trackballing will definitely be easier than a whole new keyboard layout, but I also gave up on Colemak like 3 weeks in, and I am modesty concerned that my future in finger driven trackballs will be similarly short.

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What is, or isn't, a strike exactly?

2019-12-16T04:21:25Z

A lot of people seem to have this notion that a strike is just any time people who make their money doing XYZ stop doing XYZ in an attempt to improve their living conditions.

And that's a really fair misconception to have, given how few strikes people in north America have really seen in the last few generations and the impacts of those strikes that they have seen.

But a strike is a very specific thing.

A strike is a way for the workers in a system to punish the controllers of that system, by grinding the system to a halt and reminding the people "in control" who actually makes the system work at all (it's the workers, that's why they're called that).

A protest and a strike are two very, VERY different things. They can resemble each other on a surface level, but the methodologies and margins are completely distinct.

For example, there's a reason the concept of a scab exists. A scab is someone who reaffirms to the controllers that they are in control, and enables the system to keep functioning even when the rest of the workers refuse.

If the system was always going to keep on functioning regardless of your actions, then you're organizing a protest, not a strike. And there are no scabs for a protest.

If I have to see one more person trying to claim that the "youtube strike" last week was ruined by "scabs" when it was in fact A) not a strike B) ruined by EXCEEDINGLY poor organization, up to and including not even telling your youtube viewers you were going to be walking out before it happened, then I will never stop screaming.

Words mean things, and in this case, using words like "scab" and "strike" where they do not and more importantly cannot apply just makes you sound like a petulant child who has no idea how direct action or community organization work. It's fucking shameful.

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Speak of the Devil

2019-12-16T02:53:27Z

I made a comment last night talking about how spurious claims of purity policing led to me getting shut down when discussions racism in media, specifically as regards to popular cop comedy Brooklyn 99. That all happened about 6 months ago.

And, as if summoned from the depths of hell by the mere mention of it, lo and be fucking hold, it's happening again as of this evening.

I don't understand why this is considered such a contentious subject. Brooklyn 99 is a fantastic show, and I love it. It's got superlative writing, exceptional acting, and a real sense of conscience about race dynamics.

But it's also a show where cops are sometimes the villains, but always the heroes. And that comes with baggage in a society that already considers the heroism of cops to be so ubiquitous and inherent that even when cops murder children in cold blood, most of them receive paid leave, and get hired by neighboring police precincts.

It's not that B99 doesn't try to talk about the nastiness of police and race. It's that it's a sitcom where police are the heroes. The genre restraints prevent a serious discussion from happening, save in the occasional Very Special Episode. And, often enough, that ommitment to acknowledging the complexity of race and policing is back-seated in favour of a good joke at the expect of an arrested person, of a defence lawyer, of internal affairs.

It's a good show.

It's also a flawed show.

I don't think that's really in question here... And yet, so many people insist that by pointing out and discussing these flaws, I am a monster calling for the end of QPOC on primetime TV.

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Let's Talk About Ice

2019-12-06T10:28:12Z

I have a lot of extremely conflicted feelings about Frozen 2. So let's get into that. Spoilers below the cut, obviously. And not baby spoilers. We're going to be talking about the ways the narrative failed both structurally and in terms of its themes: that means the whole ass plot.

( Read more... )
I guess, in the end, my feelings on Frozen 2 are that it's both stronger and weaker than Frozen 1. The highs are higher, but the lows, my god, the lows are lower.

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zenolalia @ 2019-11-18T20:08:00

2019-11-19T01:15:02Z

I am absolutely gagging on rage, completely rabid, over frankly a really stupid and not at all worth the energy or emotions essay circulating on tumblr.

The thesis of the essay is that modern casual communication relies too heavily on slang and allusion, and that people should speak to eachother at a more intellectual and less referential level, like they used to do in the unspecified but way better past.

The author basically doesn't understand certain common references made in casual conversation, and rather than considering what those references could me or doing research on them, the author is screaming about how other people aren't doing the research or considering the implications. Because if other people did the research and considered the implications, then the author wouldn't have to, and things would be so much better. Therefore, the entirety of modern society should shift to better cater to the author. And to justify that catering, the author keeps making vague allusions to a time when people actually did speak with well researched and absolute clarity free of allusion or dated slang. Only, of course, there's no such time. That time literally does not exist because people have been alluding and slanging since we invented language.

It's really a frustratingly bad concept, and it absolutely reeks of neo-con palingenesis given the thinnest coast of paint to make it sound progressive.

And I shouldn't care that much, because peopel are wrong all the time.

But that particular brand of rhetoric is usually just some Stormfront nazi shit. And to see literally hundreds of supposedly progressive people on tumblr saying that it's the most brilliant, insightful thing they've read all month is really alarming. And enraging.

And I'm just so absolutely fucking livid.

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Unrelated to previous posting

2019-11-05T20:24:19Z

Also, I've been listening to this one ~~K-pop~~* song that came up on the radio, basically on repeat, for like a week. I will not be seduced by the wiles of the ~~korean~~ idol industry, but I do like the song.

However, it has really strong "this is an amateur cover version of another, better song" vibes, and I have to say, I am really disappointed that, nope, this is the original version.

I hope someone with better guitar-and-vocals powers than me (I have neither lmao) will someday make a superior cover of it. This is just a tragedy.

EDIT (16:55 11/05/2019): I have been informed that just because the song showed up on a K-pop radio station, that doesn't mean it's K or pop. In fact, the band in question is actually Japanese, and billed as a rock band (though I hesitate to extend the genre of rock to this track in particular, and am awaiting further discussion eagerly).

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TMI? Never heard of her

2019-11-05T20:14:10Z

So I'm reading advice blogs about writing porn scenes, because kinktober was a, uh.... situation that I sure got myself into and then got myself back out of real fast, and I want to be prepared for next year.

( Time 4 Butts )

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Cancel Culture

2019-11-05T01:22:53Z

I know, I know, "cancel culture isn't real, it's just what white men call consequences so they don't ave to suffer them."

But listen.

The woman who makes Hazbin Hotel is currently being subjected to a mass campaign of harassment because 5 years ago she saw a youtube clip of some women, thought they were hot, and drew fanart of them. Then found out a few weeks later that they were racist shitheads who had done blackface. Viv apologized for making art of them, never did so again, and moved on with her life.

What, I ask you, is demanding HH be taken off the internet because of Viv having done a fanart 5 years ago and then apologized for it and moved on, if not fucking cancel culture?

Which brings me to tonight's talking point.

Cancel culture definitely does, in fact, exist. But, it is not equipped to punish people in power. No rich white man has ever truly suffered because of being "cancelled by the left." Louis CK is getting bookings again, Jerry Seinfeld is doing whatever the fuck he does, James Gunn is back in charge of Guardians of the Galaxy's films...

Cancel culture cannot and does not harm people in power, because the peopel doing the "cancelling" do not have equivalent or greater power with which to bring consequences to bear.

But it does encourage mob justice, unrealistic standards, and inappropriate use of long past mistakes that have not continued into the present. And all of that is then turn against marginalized people. Small time queer artists, essayists, activists, etc are held to standards far above what even the biggest industry names are held to. Because the big industry names have the power, reputation, and backing necessary to shake right past that kind of mob.

And independent creators don't. Furthermore, independent creators are much more likely to actually be concerned about the peopel their creating for, and thus willing to actually internalize criticism. So not only can they not avoid it, but they're hit harder by it.

Cancel culture is actively detrimental to its own causes: it doesn't punish harmful people, only well meaning people doing their best.

So, I guess, this is a warning as much as it is a post: if you think cancel culture is not real, or that it's a good thing, etc, then you'll probably not want to associate with my content too long.

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The Allowances of Art

2019-11-03T00:31:20Z

There's a topic of conversation that has been rolling around my social media feeds, and which is extremely frustrating to me in ways that I have trouble articulating.

There's this persistent notion that you "shouldn't" write about characters with identities you don't share, because you "can't" understand the nuances of their lives. Sometimes, people will say you should only write about such characters if you've done extremely detailed amounts of research, and others will say it is utterly forbidden.

This is endlessly frustrating to me.

From the perspective of almost any of my myriad marginalizations, it puts people like me in a situation where no one will write for or about us except for ourselves. From the perspective of the marginalizations I don't share it, it leaves me without the ability to use my art as a way of expressing alliance and furthering equality. From the perspective of a writer, it just rings of the same censorship people are always trying to put on fiction, this time with a slightly different set of vocabulary.

I want to be able to read about, say, mixed race intersex people, without having to be the one who writes those stories for myself.

Basically, white/cis/hetero/men/whatever get the opportunity to be the audience. The rest of us are expected to be the creators. And we are expected to create only in extremely restrictive, and even separatist fashions.

I have a hard time expressing why, exactly, this line of argument is so frustrating to me. It seems more like a conflux of little things than any one major flaw.

But it's gettign more prominent again, and it's making me absolutely livid.

Basically, let straight white men write about queer poc so that queer poc like myself can take a goddamn break.

That's not mutually exclusive to "celebrate the art of marginalized people" either. But this expectation that marginalized people do all the hard parts...

Well.

It smacks of, "if you don't like white men being the protagonists of games, go make your own game," in progressive paint.

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Hype Train

2019-11-01T05:21:45Z

You ever get hit face-first by the reminder that His Dark Materials is finally getting a mini-series adaptation on a platform that will allow for the more complex, darker, and violent themes it presents?

I'm so goddamn motherfucking hype.

I'm also extremely ready to read every HDM crossover/Daemon AU fic in the universe as they all come spilling forth from the depths.

Daemon fic is absolutely my favourite shit, and it's been getting rarer and rarer and I'm so ready for that revival.

Ahhhh!!!!

I noticed that there aren't any active DW comms for daemon AUs/analysis or for HDM as a series, so I'm thinking about starting one.

But, like. I don't know how to advertise communities in this format, so maybe I'm not the best suited?

Than again, who is better suited than The Person Who Can Actually Be Bothered, when it comes to small fandoms with limited gathering places...

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Hazbin Hotel Initial Opinions

2019-11-01T04:07:22Z

Good. So good. Holy fucking shit, HH is so good.

I didn't realize how starved I was for lush western 2D animation that isn't beholden to ages 10-and-under ratings requirements. I've relied on anime to fill that niche for a long time, but anime has very different style conventions to western 2D and it's so fucking good to see western 2D operating in this sphere.

Like, nothing against adult animations such as Disenchanted or Big Mouth, but the animation style lacks the vivid, model-bending mania that you see in the bulk of 2D animation. It's as though peopel have been convinced that for western animation to appeal to adults, it much be staid and heavily on-model or hideous gross-out style. And those styles of animation are great and valuable too, but oh my god they've been the only thing you can see in adult animation for so fucking long. For decades, possibly? (My sense of the passage of time is very poor, and so is my memory, so this may not be correct).

Effusive praise for the visual design aside, it's also got musicals! About horrible things! Which is my favourite kind!

And the songs themselves are great, too, which is rad because musical interludes in animation absolute can get away with being kind of shit. As long as the visuals carry it, it's more than sufficient. But bruh, they did not fuck around at all.

There's some discourse hovering around tumblr/twitter where antis and puritans have concluded that a show about literal damned souls going to literal rehab shouldn't feature "problematic content," which I'll go into in this cut, but tl;dr: it's pointless, masturbatory bullshit to make puritans feel better about how much they hate themselves.

There are several arguments I've seen, and I'm going to speed through them and how stupid they are.

( Wank )

Back to the goods!

If I were the kinning type, I would kin Angel Dust. What a glorious queer disaster slut. Bless him.

Vaggie and Charlie's relationship is cuter that fuck, I don't know how to cope, it's so good. Like, they know eachother flaws and help compensate for them so well and so immediately, and it's glorious.

A main cast that consists exclusively of queers is rad. I love that. I love it!!!! There's not enough of that! Even in adult animation, where it should by rights be everywhere!

Sssir Pentious is great, I assume he's dead for real and we won't see him again, but dude. His lil obsessive step-on-me-daddy Egg Henchmen were also fantastic.

I want Cherry Bomb to rail me behind the denny's at 3:47 AM on a sunday morning.

The voice acting was so good!

The manipulation of the fourth wall as an artistic choice without ever actually breaking it was glorious and I nearly pissed myself when the Radio Demon pulled that shit.

My basically only complaint is a throwaway line and a couple of implications that drug addiction is a cardinal sin which can get you damned to hell, but given that it's a show about a rehab clinic in a christian theology, I can let that one slide. Might be somethign to consider if you're especially sensitive to drug addiction jokes, though.

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User Interface Design

2019-10-30T00:20:43Z

I've been watching a lot of UI and UX design guides lately, because it's always fascinating to me to see how very tiny tweaks make very large differences in experience.

My favourite one is an analysis of the UI of the composition software Muse Score, which is fascinatingly inconsistent. Users of open-source software will recognize exactly the sort of bizarre, piss poor yet weirdly functional UI design immediately. Parts of it are spectacularly put together for the tasks in question, such as navigation and certain forms of input, which allow rapid, intuitive use that doesn't interupt flow and saves time. And yet, inconsistent glyphs, empty sidebars, and checklists that close after each click make it teeth-grindingly painful in some places.

But, the one that I think I would recommend to a general audience is this video about how the UX in popular video games is functionally alien, acting like a foreign language to people who don't play games regularly. It's much less technical, but it's also just so intriguing. Things like KB+M games not mentioning that the mouse controls your camera angle, because it's just assumed that everyone knows that, leading players to stare straight ahead for long period of time. Not knowing how to use on-screen maps or waymarks. Plus, the sense of peculiar disappointment from realizing that an open world game nonetheless has a highly scripted or railroaded path that doesn't allow for the solution you came up with to a certain problem.

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My mother is dying

2019-10-21T21:03:27Z

My mother is dying, so the rest of this post is going underneath a cut so people can avoid hearing about a potentially fucked up topic.

( Read more... )

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Just a miniature medical update

2019-06-11T01:20:28Z

For those following this saga of stupidity, I saw my GP. She got the notes from the specialist who did in fact try to tell her that it was sleep apnea, but fortunately, my decision to contact the records department myself and get a copy of the lab test forwarded meant that my GP was able to see the lab and conclude that no it fucking isn't, based on A) the fact that the lab showed no signs of it being apnea and B) the lab tech who pulled the results over the machine ALSO saying on the lab paperwork itself that it isn't apnea, which is a FUN fucking detail that specialist neglected to mention. I also got my own copy of the lab, including the tech's comments.

I'm going forward with narcolepsy testing as soon as insurance comes through (so not any time soon) and until then have gone ahead and proactively begun making the relevant lifestyle changes in as much as is possible. There's limits to what can be achieved without medication, in terms of hours-a-day, but hopefully I can get better quality from the hours that I do have awake.

My sister, who does a lot of liaison type work between abused kids and hospitals, and thus has experience with this stuff, is going to help me file a complaint about this specialist with the licensing board she works under. I was willing to let it slide, honestly, until the fucking part where she tried to sabotage me with my GP.

Basically, it's all been shit, and it's probably all going to keep being shit, but at least it's like... more controlled shit now?

I don't know. At least I have a working concept of what to do going forward.

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